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44 books on 44 presidents: How Abraham Lincoln evolved

Editor's note: This is the sixteenth entry in the writer's year-long project to read one book about each of the U.S. Presidents by Election Day 2016. You can also follow Marcus' progress at the @44in52 Twitter account and with this 44 in 52 Spreadsheet.

Change is inevitable.

It can also be painful, exhausting, and disorienting; a constant fight to stay grounded while everything around you goes to hell. And how you respond to that change can change you. It's easy to lose yourself in toxic tides.

Abraham Lincoln took over from President Buchanan, generally agreed to be the worst president in U.S. history, as the first shots in the Civil War were fired and the country was irrevocably changed.

There are a million different threads to pick up from that point. But of all the threads outlined in David Herbert Donald's outstanding biography Lincoln, the one I came back to was how Lincoln changed substantially from the earliest days of his career to the day of his death — but never seemed to sacrifice who he was.

Donald's bio of Lincoln is lucid, straight-forward. Very well written. Smart read, easy read. Just lots to it!

Political evolution is hardly new (for a more recent example, see President Obama and his evolution on gay marriage, admittedly with a gentle shove from Joe Biden). But we tend to think of it as a negative attribute. So for me, it was a revelation to see the process take place more than 150 years ago — and with our greatest president.

Lincoln evolved on slavery, from a man who avoided the issue to one who, even in the White House, was still changing his mind on the question of black suffrage. He had an intense, internal struggle that shaped him and that journey is what makes Donald's book so engrossing.

For all the grade school myths, it's easy to forget that Lincoln was human, that he wrestled with these issues just as others did.

Donald notes that in 1836, while running for reelection as a state legislator, Lincoln "revealed incidentally that he ... did not think African-Americans were entitled to the ballot."

Also, interested to see Lincoln's evolution of feelings on African-Americans to Emancipation. From the late 1850s: pic.twitter.com/kI6lqm4JnR

This was a widespread belief at the time. What's more surprising was the fact that, early in his political career, Lincoln supported creating a separate colony for former slaves, an idea proposed by one of his idols, Henry Clay.

Donald deftly describes how Lincoln, though always opposed to slavery, felt hemmed in by the politics of the time. He used the colonization theory even as he doubted its feasibility. It was a way to put off an issue he didn't fully understand how to solve:

Even if he had a plan, there was no way of putting it into effect... For a man with a growing sense of urgency about abolishing, or at least limiting, slavery, who had no solution to the problem and no political outlet for making his feelings known, colonization offered a very useful escape.

"If all earthly power were given me, I should not know what to do," Lincoln said. It's refreshing to know that politicians have always dithered. They struggle. They're human.

Also never realized (well, I probably did and then forgot) Lincoln was initially pro-colonization for freed slaves.

At first, Lincoln was stymied by his desire to appeal to the more conservative side of his first party, the Whigs. Witness the balancing act a young Lincoln had to perform over the Kansas-Nebraska Act, trying to distance himself from anti-slavery Republicans while maintaining his opposition to slavery. At the same time, he was forced to admit he would rather see slavery extended into new states than "see the Union dissolved."

As Lincoln struggles, the Whigs are dying. The anti-immigrant Know Nothing party flared up out of nowhere, and the anti-slavery Republican Party gets underway.

Lincoln finds traces of his own beliefs in all of these parties. He has trouble defining his position because he can't even seem to fully define himself politically in a time of rapid change.

In private, Lincoln was more liberal than in his public stances. Donald cites a letter to close friend Joshua Speed in which Lincoln denied he was part of the rising Know Nothing party, unlike many of his fellow former Whigs. "How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes be in favor of degrading classes of white people?" he asks.

Lincoln as a Know Nothing is compelling enough, but Lincoln as a pro-colonization guy is more so. Never ceases to surprise.

Even in the early days of the war, after becoming president, Lincoln was reluctant to ban slavery in the Confederacy. He didn't want to break his inaugural pledge to not interfere with slavery in the southern states. But he knew the areas where he could make firm decisions, such as banning southerners from reclaiming escaped slaves who had become part of the Union army (though arming black soldiers would be another topic Lincoln would wrestle with for years).

Lincoln also evolved on the position of using black soldiers in the Union Army. Adaptation is so key to his presidency.

Lincoln's evolution on the most sensitive topic of the 1860s was an incredibly complex fight, both internally and externally, full of political maneuvering and differing opinions. It was perfectly acceptable to discuss emancipation by a matter of degrees. Lincoln thought it might take decades.

There are a million different ways to approach Lincoln. Dozens at a time were careening around my skull while I read. Likewise, there are a million different versions of this recap I could write.

But this project has always been about finding the humanity behind the mythic figures that occupied the White House. So I was pleased to find I could still find a way to make a president as ubiquitous in as Lincoln feel new, that I could tap into the exhilaration of discovery.

In the end, it made every bit of drudgery associated with his dull, incompetent predecessor presidents worthwhile.

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